Mica > Mica's Quotes

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“Every day I saw others like me in this city—enough of us to populate our own town. But we only acknowledged each other with a furtive glance, fearful of calling attention to ourselves. Being alone in public was painful enough; two could find themselves smack in the center of an unbearable sideshow. We didn’t seem to have any of our own places to gather in community, to immerse ourselves in our own ways and our own languages.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“When my alarm jangled in the morning, I awoke feeling small and terrified. I couldn't find myself in my own life—there was no memory of me that I could grasp. There was no place outside of me where I belonged. So every morning I willed myself back into existence.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“Oh, Ruth. I wish we had our own words to describe ourselves, to connect us.”
Ruth stood up and opened the broiler. “I don’t need another label,” she sighed. “I just am what I am. I call myself Ruth. My mother is Ruth Anne; my grandmother was Anne. That’s who I am. That’s where I come from.”
I shrugged. “I don’t want another label either. I just wish we had words so pretty we’d go out of our way to say them out loud.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I wondered if she would have left me if there had been more inside of me to love, or if I just could have needed less.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I thought about the long road I’d traveled. I had
never stopped looking out at the world through my
own eyes. I’d never stopped feeling like me on the
inside. What if the real me could emerge, changed
by the journey. Who would I be? Suddenly, I needed
to know. What would my life be worth if I stopped short of finding out? Fingers of excitement and fear tightened around my throat. Where was I going
now? Who was I becoming? I couldn’t answer those
questions, but even asking them was a sign to me that tumultuous change had been boiling just below the surface of my consciousness.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I had been at the center of her world; she had become my whole world. As my universe shrank, I needed her to be everything for me, and in return I longed to be everything she needed. Neither of us could live up to the expectations.”
― Leslie Feinberg , Stone Butch Blues

“All the girls and women looked pretty much the same, so did all the boys and men. I couldn't find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always searching.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I've been going to the library, looking up our history. There's a ton of it in anthropology books, Ruth. We haven't always been hated. Why didn't we grow up knowing that?”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I had learned a lot in three weeks. I realized that the world could do more than just judge me, it wielded tremendous power over me.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“When you do something out of conviction, my dear, it should be because you believe it's the right thing to do. If you look for approval from everyone, you'll never be able to act.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“You're more than just neither, honey. There's other ways to be than either-or. It's not so simple. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many people who don't fit.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I felt as though I was rushing into a burning building to discover the ideas I needed for my own life.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I remembered what it was like to walk a gauntlet of strangers who stare—their eyes angry, confused, intrigued. Woman or man: they are outraged that I confuse them. The punishment will follow. The only recognition I can find in their eyes is that I am “other.” I am different. I will always be different. I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I began to feel the pleasure of the weightless state between here and there.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it’s hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine.

To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write.”
― Leslie Feinberg

“Sometimes I feel like I’m choking to death on what
I’m feeling. I need to talk and I don’t even know how.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“The shades of gender in her voice were intricate, like mine.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I want to understand about change--I don't just want to be at the mercy of it. I feel like I'm waking up inside. I want to know about history. I have all this new information about people like me down through the ages, but I don't know anything about the ages.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“To safeguard what we've won and to move forward requires securing, solidifying, and making more permanent alliances with others who are hurt by the same system. Consciousness plays an important role in cementing this coalition. Shared consciousness becomes a material force because what you're fighting for and what you are determined to win together has a big impact on how your foes react to you.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

“I don't think the point is: Why are we different? Why have we refused to walk one of two narrow paths, but instead demanded the right to blaze our own? The question is not why we were unwilling to conform even when being beaten to the ground by ridicule and brutality.

The real burning question is: How did we ever find the courage? From what underground spring did we draw our pride? How did each of us make our way in life, without a single familiar star in the night sky to guide us, to this room where we have at last found others like ourselves? And after so much of ourselves has been injured, or left behind as expendable ballast, many of us worry "What do we have left to give each other? Upon what basis will we build something lasting between us?"

I think we have a whole world to give back to each other.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

“I stared far back into my past and remembered
the child who couldn’t be catalogued by Sears. I
saw her standing in front of her own mirror, in
her father’s suit, asking me if I was the person she
would grow up to become. Yes, I answered her. And
I thought how brave she was to have begun this
journey, to have withstood the towering judgments.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I live proudly in a body of my own design. I defend my right to be complex.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

“Where do my tears go? Why is it that I can’t cry now when I need to? Yet I knew that later my tears would be unexpectedly triggered by the scent of lilacs, or the low hum of a cello.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“I could see the sadness in Jan's smile. "You've been through a lot. There’s some age you can’t count by years. You know how they cut a slice from a tree and count the rings? You got a lot of rings inside that trunk of yours. You know what? I think it’s time I stopped calling you kid. You stopped being a kid a long time ago.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“Strong to my enemies, tender to those I loved and respected. That's what I wanted to be. Soon I would have to put these abilities to the test. But for the moment, I was happy.”
― Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.

And it's relentless.”
― Leah Raeder, Black Iris